MUMBAI, 14 December 2020: India’s leading agri commodity exchange, National Commodity & Derivatives Exchange Limited (NCDEX) has announced that it will re-launch the Gur Futures contract, adding one more product to its diversified agri commodities portfolio.
The Gur Futures contract would be made available for trading from December 15, 2020 with Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh as the basis centre.
Commenting on the launch, Vijay Kumar, MD & CEO, NCDEX said, “With the launch of Gur, we are going to fulfil a long pending demand of the industry. India is a global leader in Gur production sharing around 60% of the total production. But there was no price benchmark available to either producers or traders. Now, with this futures contract, we hope to have an efficient price discovery and price dissemination for the commodity. Having a price benchmark not only makes the risk management easier but also ensures better decision making for value chain participants.”
Despite India being the largest producer of Gur, Brazil occupies the top slot as exporter of the commodity. The US, China and Indonesia are major importers of Gur.
As per the available data, the world Gur output totaled at 13.6 million metric ton in 2018, of which India alone accounted for around 8.17 million metric ton. Uttar Pradesh leads the production chart with 47 percent of the country’s total output, followed by Maharashtra, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu sharing 21 percent, 8 percent and 5 percent of the output, respectively.
Kapil Dev, Head of Business & Products, NCDEX, said, “Gur is a major commodity, especially in India, where it is widely used in food products, distilleries and for medicinal purposes. But there is no benchmark, either for the quality or the price. With the launch of Gur contract on NCDEX platform, both the gaps will be filled. This is going to help the industry to a large extent. Gur futures will definitely help primary producers, traders, consumers and other stakeholders in managing price volatility and hedging the price risk."
The contract will be available for all monthly expiries in 2021 except for May and October. The price quotation will be Rs. per Mann or Mound, which weighs around 40kg.
Gur or Jaggery is a pure, traditional, unrefined form of sweetener. This is a low grade non-centrifugal ancient sweetening agent in India and other countries.
It is different from Khandsari sugar, which is a finely granulated, crystallized Sugar that contains 94-98 percent sucrose. It differs from refined Sugar to the extent that the latter mainly consists of glucose and fructose, while the prior contains glucose and sucrose.
Unlike in refined Sugar, Gur also has minerals and vitamins.